Dependence
by golden starfish
Summary: A McKay centered Allies episode tag. Rating for dark themes and torture.


**Rating for dark themes and the odd swear word.  
****Pairing: **None**  
Warnings:** Torture, drug use.  
**Spoilers:** "Allies", "The Hive" and "Grace Under Pressure"  
**A/N:** Massive thanks to my wonderful betas imskysmom, ga unicorn and Linda. Remaining mistakes are all mine. Also thanks to Derry for her encouragement to write this. ;)

* * *

**Dependence**

As ever, when McKay thought things couldn't possibly get any worse, they did. The Wraith had announced that they were on their way to Earth, the quick way or the slow way. And thanks to the preserving qualities of the cocoons in which they were being held McKay and Ronon would be alive to see Earth taken by the Wraith.

McKay was fighting his panic; there was no way to win. If he told the Wraith what they wanted to know to 'save' himself they'd get to Earth and probably kill him anyway. If he didn't co-operate he would be tortured and kept alive until he capitulated - after which he would be of no further use and would be killed. He had the knowledge, or at least the Wraith thought he had the knowledge, to make the relevant changes to their engines to get them to Earth quickly i.e. before they needed to cannibalize one another for food. He mentally sighed. Screwed. He was so screwed. _They_ were so screwed.

* * *

The Wraith yanked McKay from his cocoon. He gasped reflexively and waited for the usual threat. The Wraith were so predictable, it was like they all had a script they were reading from. "You will tell us what we want to know." "Never!" McKay snarled back. He waited for the Wraith's hand to make contact with his chest, it did moments later. "You will tell us what we want to know or we will take your life, bit by bit, slowly and painfully, until you do." 

"No chance!" he spat back in a harsh whisper as he felt his life being drained from him. But all he could think was… _the enzyme_… as he felt its fire in his body again.

_The enzyme_.

* * *

McKay had tried to think of plan to allow himself and Ronon to escape. Something. _Anything._ Sabotage was impossible in his current position. He'd drawn a complete blank, short of trying to kill all the Wraith on the ship barehanded. If he'd had the drug they'd developed with the Hoffan people then he could have… he banished the thought. This wasn't a situation he could think himself out of; it was something that needed military might. And that was something he didn't have. Instead he was trapped on a ship hurtling through the cold wastelands of space back towards his home world.

* * *

If it wasn't for the enzyme McKay was sure he would have cracked by now and be helping the Wraith in anyway he could. But feeling it again… 

Despite _everything_, he had still craved it on Atlantis. Now all he had to do was not give to the 'torture' of being fed upon and he could get a free dose - in exchange for an indeterminate number of years off his life.

He thought of the Genii and how quickly he'd surrendered the information they were after. He was ashamed of that. Now he could imagine Sheppard's congratulations for not yielding to torture, for trying to protect Earth, and all McKay could think was that he wouldn't have done if it wasn't for the enzyme. He already felt like a fraud, he wasn't strong for holding out; he was so very weak for giving in to the enzyme.

* * *

In the cocoon McKay was held motionless, a preserved specimen. Without the paralyzing effect of the sticky cocoon McKay knew he would have been writhing on the floor in agony by now. It had been over a day since the Wraith had last fed on him; he hadn't seen the Queen yet, but he expected to very soon. He was not looking forward to the mind games Sheppard had informed him would follow. 

In the meantime the Wraith had, surprisingly, resorted to the 'old fashioned' torture methods, burning, but McKay didn't crack even then. Whilst blisters formed upon his skin he'd had fleeting thoughts of trying to kill the Wraith but only to mutilate their bodies and remove the enzyme sacs. He'd wanted to scream at them to feed on him again; and then scream with despair because of that desire. Instead he watched them brandish weapons of torture and let the pain they inflicted distract him from the cramping agony of withdrawal.

* * *

He could see Ronon in his cocoon. McKay wondered how Ronon was feeling: trapped inside a ship of the enemy - an enemy he had evaded for seven years only to walk straight into their hands. They hadn't seen it coming. They never did. 

McKay wondered if Gaul had felt the enzyme before he had died, if the lingering effects had somehow contributed to his actions. McKay quickly dismissed the thought; he wasn't going there and unearthing that trauma again. He wondered how his previous experience with the enzyme had changed its effect on him now, if it had at all. He knew the Wraith couldn't feed upon people when they were artificially full of enzyme, but then why did they dose their victims? He wondered how old he looked now, how many more times they could feed on him before he died. A small part of him just didn't care. He had begun to grow tolerant of the enzyme, its effects lessening with every feeding.

* * *

McKay had been trying to remember Sam's words, about having faith in his team, yet he found being trapped on a Wraith vessel was making that difficult. Hysteria rose in him again. The truth was that he couldn't make the changes needed to make the Wraith's drives and engines reach Earth. He didn't have enough information at his disposal to even allow him to try and interface _that_ type of Ancient and Wraith technology. Sheppard could usually tell when he was lying but thankfully the Wraith couldn't. 

In the end that he would die in an attempt to save Earth, or at least buy it more time. That would be how everyone else would perceive it - a noble death. 'Dr Rodney McKay, the man who saved Earth from the Wraith.' That had a nice ring to it. He smiled wryly inside his mind. 'The man who died trying to save Earth but the Wraith came to dinner anyway.' Not such a nice ring to that.

McKay gasped as a Wraith yanked him free of the cocoon and waited for the usual villainous grandstanding. Instead McKay found himself watching in horror as another Wraith guard dragged Ronon from his cocoon and held a stunner to his head.

"You will tell us what we want to know or we will kill him!" the Wraith demanded.

McKay looked at Ronon. He couldn't let the Wraith kill Ronon, despite what Ronon might have to say about collaborating with the Wraith later.

"McKay! You will not capitulate!" growled Ronon as he struggled against the two Wraith guards. One guard hit Ronon across the face and then thrust his hand onto Ronon's chest.

McKay tried to remain impassive but as Ronon began to writhe with the pain of being fed upon McKay knew what needed to be done. He turned to the Wraith guard by his side, "I will help you, I'll need to look at the drives and the information you _stole_ from us about the Aurora."

The Wraith guard ceased feeding upon Ronon immediately but still clutched Ronon tightly.

"Rodney!" Ronon coughed from the effort of shouting, "You self involved traitorous -" Ronon's angry tirade continued but McKay merely stared back at him returning the look of disappointment.

McKay felt a Wraith guard grab him by the arm and manhandle him down the corridor away from Ronon.

_'Do you have so little faith in me you actually think I'm going to give anything to these monsters?'_ thought McKay.

* * *

It felt like days had passed. McKay was sat in the middle of a large room surrounded by computer screens and wires. He had been working continuously on the drives, making changes but nothing that could be used to make galactic travel convenient, although he truly didn't know what would give that functionality. He didn't know what he was doing. He was finding it increasingly difficult to think clearly enough to maintain the pretence. 

McKay knew he was in withdrawal now, his mind flitted and screamed with an unusual turmoil and yearning. He dropped another tool; he looked down at his shaking hands he futilely willed them to stop. The aching and nausea had already begun.

He'd thought of sabotaging the wraith drives now he had access, he'd thought of hacking into their systems too, but nothing was easy was under continuous close guard with Wraith scientists sporadically checking his work. The scientists had tried to get McKay to work with them to adjust the drives but when it became clear McKay would not collaborate they reluctantly gave him more space. The Wraith didn't know _exactly_ what he was doing, that was why he was there after all, so he had a small window to maneuver in. He rewrote various protocols and tried to install a self destruct so that the Wraith could never reach earth – something the system kept rejecting for an unknown reason.

McKay scrubbed his sweaty face with quivering hands. Images of the enzyme bottle flashed through his mind. What he wouldn't give... no. He looked up at the Wraith guard and wonder if he attempted to escape whether he… it… whatever it was… would try and feed on him. His fantasizing was interrupted by the shuddering of the ship as his protocols kicked in.

_Oh Thank God. Now if only you had actually worked out the finer details of that escape plan, like how to ESCAPE, everything would be just hunky-dory._

At that moment the Wraith Queen entered the room with her long coat trailing behind her and an ugly angry look on her face.

"What have you done to our drives?" she demanded.

McKay eyed the Wraith carefully. "It's a minor glitch; I just need to make some more adjustments. The data from the Aurora is incomplete. Combining Wraith and Ancient technology is very, _very _complicated which is exactly why you needed a genius such as _me_ to interface the two." It was so much harder to demand extra time authoratively when his voice merely croaked.

The Queen stepped towards McKay and raised her hand, "why did you try to sabotage this ship?"

McKay felt a hot stabbing pain in his head; he took a shuddering breath in and out and ground out his reply. "I did not try to sabotage the ship, it's not my fault if you don't understand the complexity of the work you are asking me to do for you!"

"You tried to sabotage this ship."

"I told you I was -" McKay's words petered out as the pain in his head intensified. It was almost as though he could feel the tentacles of the Wraith's mind trying to delve into his. He tried to think of anything but what was happening right now.

The angry look on the Queen's face morphed into one of curiosity, "You have taken the 'enzyme' as you put it? We knew there were a handful of humans who dared mutilate our kind. Who thought someone with your intelligence and standing would have joined them and fought against us in such an… unsophisticated manner?"

_'Who would've thought it,' _repeatedMcKay bitterly.

The Wraith grinned, "You will have one chance to make the necessary changes before your friend is brought here and has his life taken from him in front of you."

Suddenly McKay felt his head hit the wall, the Wraith's toothy snarl centimeters away from his face. "Is this what you want human? This is going to be torture of a different kind for you. You will wish you had died a million painful deaths after this."

And then McKay felt it, the crushing pressure on his chest, the stinging contact with old wounds, the pure warmth of the enzyme and then the ice cold draining of life.

"Attempts to sabotage this ship _cannot _be allowed. You will make the correct changes," instructed the Queen.

McKay didn't reply. He just drifted in his mind idly wondering why the feeding was lasting so much longer than previous occasions. _Why didn't people who had been fed upon become stronger? _He couldn't understand it. Rational thought had begun to elude him.

_The enzyme made you strong but then it also made you tastier to the Wraith. Salt. The enzyme was like salt. Toast. No. Potato. Potato chips, so much tastier._

He saw the Queen move away and felt his body limply fall to the floor. After a feeding he never had the extra energy he'd had when using the enzyme. Now its effects were only temporary, at the first instance of feeding and then a lingering warmth. Could the Wraith make you overdose on the enzyme whilst feeding? Was that what they did to you to make you so strong and what made you feel so weak afterwards? McKay would have recoiled in terror at the thoughts but he felt his rational self fading away. How long could he keep up the bluff in this state?

He lay on the floor mildly relieved at the feeling of the enzyme now coursing through his body. Not enough. Never enough. He shook.

_Maybe some more enzyme would restore me to my 'youthful' state. The enzyme made people heal quicker. Maybe it could turn back the years. A time machine. Clocks. Sands of time. One-way road. Mr. Reaper with a large scythe._

_Sheppard where are you?_

_Should be rescuing my important ass._

_Sheppard. Space. Ship. Earth. Eating. Feeding. Eating._

_Plates. Did the food come on plates? Escape. Daggers. No wait it was needles? Needles. The Wraith didn't have needles. I need a needle to escape. Need a needle. Strong. Need to be strong. A needle to be strong._

_Sheppard?_

_You came?_

_Get Beckett. Tell him… you can guess. John?_

_Why are you floating?

* * *

_

Lying on the floor of the Hive ship McKay twitched and murmured as he slowly came down from the feeding. He didn't know how long he'd been lying there but when he finally started to become aware of his surroundings he understood that there was no chance of escaping by himself – but however stupidly distant and improbable, there was still a chance of rescue.

Sheppard, Carson and Kate were going to… But they didn't _need_ to know what had happened. All they would know was that he had been fed upon. They never needed to know about his want, need for the enzyme and the feedings. That was assuming he could ever break free of the addiction now.

_Sheppard. Sam knew you would rescue me, she said I should have faith in you, in the team. Come on then you cocky son of a – I'm waiting. Get me the hell out of here._

_I'm waiting._

_It's all I can do now._


End file.
